Parents can have a duty to use IVF, say bioethicists

17 April 2012

Two American bioethicists have argued that some parents have a moral obligation to use IVF and embryo testing to create only disease-free children.

In a piece in the American Journal of Bioethics, Janet Malek of East Carolina University and Judith F. Daar of Whittier Law School in California, support "a duty on IVF-reproducing parents to maximize the well-being of their future offspring by all reasonable means". [BioEdge, 13 April]

Anthony Ozimic of SPUC said: "This is just the latest version of the age-old barbarism of eugenics, stretching from the exposing of disabled infants in ancient Greece to the Nazi euthanasia programme. We must not be weak in condeming it simply because it appears in an academic journal."